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A similar call to Burger King in Morro Bay, California, about a purported gas leak in early February resulted in $35,000 of damage. Not only did employees smash the windows, but a manager went as far as ramming his car into the building.

Either the caller in that instance has totally missed his vocation as a cult leader, or the manager is way overdue for a Darwin Event.
 
This reminds me of that film Compliance, which was based on true stories where unknown phone callers would phone up fast food restaurants while pretending to be a cop and demand a member of staff was imprisoned and eventually stripped in a back room for some crime which had never happened. Sounds like the hoaxers are upping their game.
 
This reminds me of that film Compliance, which was based on true stories where unknown phone callers would phone up fast food restaurants while pretending to be a cop and demand a member of staff was imprisoned and eventually stripped in a back room for some crime which had never happened. Sounds like the hoaxers are upping their game.
You'd have to be thick as **** to actually believe that windows could explode because of gas pressure .. surely if you fell for the prank call at all, the first thing you'd do would be to wedge the front door open .. and unless windows in the place can't be opened, you'd just open windows and call your boss as backup surely? ...
 
This is the thing, you would think if someone phoned you up claiming to be official and told you to act in a manner that was not entirely sensible you would tell them where to go, but there have been hundreds of these cases where the callers are getting off on making people commit often criminal acts, all because they think it really is a cop on the line telling them what to do. There's a psychology essay in this somewhere.
 
Maybe, but there is a pattern here where the victims create their own justifications on the spot after being instructed by the prank caller. Could very well be they subconsciously would have loved to smash up the restaurant and this "official" order gave them all the excuse they wanted.
 
Maybe, but there is a pattern here where the victims create their own justifications on the spot after being instructed by the prank caller. Could very well be they subconsciously would have loved to smash up the restaurant and this "official" order gave them all the excuse they wanted.
I think Shady's just agreed with you in advance :cool:
 
This could also go in the "Predictions for 2016" thread :

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http://indy100.independent.co.uk/ar...king-he-had-predicted-the-future--bJx_WjIJH4W
 
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Samuel Davide Hains was a beguiling man - at once silly, radical and self-assured.

He wore second-hand overalls backwards, carried a tote bag emblazoned with the slogan "Feeling Myself" and professed to admiring "the style of Trotsky in leather".

"My favourite place to shop is K Mart," he said. "I like to re-imagine chain store garments and pair them with high end fashion, like my Chanel cape."

The editors of Melbourne's The Age found Samuel's off-beat shtick so intriguing that they put him on the newspaper's website and the front page.

Soon he was dubbed "the world's biggest hipster" and his absurd interview rocketed around the internet, spawning scores of follow-up stories and millions of clicks.

But Samuel Davide Hains didn't exist. He was a hoax, perpetrated by Sam Hains, a computer programmer with a talent for making absurd statements on the fly.

Hains, 24, admitted to VICE that his bucolic-socialist-with-a-dash-of-jazz persona was a hoax. The Age has since fired Tara Kenny, the journalist who knowingly submitted Sam's lies to the Street Seen fashion column.

Hains described the "media machine" that chased him as "diabolical", saying that "the whole thing was getting out of control". He found the level of abuse he copped "saddening and disturbing".


T-shirt terror

Back in the primordial, parochial year of 1992, a bizarre and revealing media frenzy swept Australia - that of Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts (YPAHMTS).

I founded YPAHMTS by accident one morning while working in a Sydney office where the boss forever had talkback radio booming. A prominent Australian shock jock, Alan Jones, was banging on about a local thrash-punk band called the Hard-Ons. Jones said the group's name was symptomatic of a youth culture's moral decline.

Jones bugged me, so to let off steam I knocked out a letter claiming to be the head of a growing national movement called Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts and faxed it to a few newspapers. Here's a snippet of my earnest drivel that "went viral":

Young people have shown remarkable responsibility towards the environment, and now it is time for them to clean themselves up and act with equal respect for themselves and their elders.

This means stopping socially and personally damaging activities such as smoking, drinking, swearing, taking drugs, easy sex and, in particular, wearing heavy metal T-shirts.

Heavy metal T-shirts may seem like a small issue, but look at how many people wear them in public. They depict scenes of violence and sex, and in many cases openly incite subversion and a cynical attitude towards the moral guardians of our society, such as the police, parents, religious figures and law and order in general.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Matt Thompson led a fraudulent campaign against heavy metal T-shirts in the 1990s
Media machine

It seemed too ludicrous to be published, but a couple of days later my boss slapped down the Daily Telegraph, Sydney's tabloid newspaper, opened to a page with the bold headline: 'Stamp out T-shirt terror'. As he demanded to know what the hell this was about, the phone rang.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36761324
 
Paul Sheldon's number one fan .. (helps if you've read Stephen King's Misery or seen the film) :twisted:

 
Imposters! .. a couple of Manchester lads blag their way onto the Olympic bus with fake medals ..

 
I once had a neighbor who was a complete pratt about his lawn (among other things). It wouldn't have been a problem if he had been content to waste his time obsessing about his own grass, but he felt it was his mission to point out any imperfections in his neighbors' lawns as well.

So, one night I mixed up some weed killer and froze it into frisbee shapes, then sailed a few of them out into the middle of his front lawn. Within a few days he had some very nice bare spots. He spent the rest of the season seeding, feeding, and fussing over those spots. I had used the good stuff, though, and nothing grew in those spots for a year.

It shut him up about the neighbors' lawns.:evil:
 
I once had a neighbor who was a complete pratt about his lawn (among other things). It wouldn't have been a problem if he had been content to waste his time obsessing about his own grass, but he felt it was his mission to point out any imperfections in his neighbors' lawns as well.

So, one night I mixed up some weed killer and froze it into frisbee shapes, then sailed a few of them out into the middle of his front lawn. Within a few days he had some very nice bare spots. He spent the rest of the season seeding, feeding, and fussing over those spots. I had used the good stuff, though, and nothing grew in those spots for a year.

It shut him up about the neighbors' lawns.:evil:

Frisbees? Extra points for style, at least.

Ice cubes and a slingshot would've sufficed for most people.
 
Ukraine suspects Kremlin behind prank call to president
Kyrgyzstan says one person detained over embarrassing hoax by well-known Russian duo


Ukraine has blamed the Kremlin and Russia’s security services for a bizarre prank call to its president, Petro Poroshenko.

Mr Poroshenko’s administration released a statement on November 2nd saying he had held a telephone conversation with Kyrgyz counterpart Almazbek Atambayev and discussed bilateral relations, trade and other issues.

Kyrgyz officials denied any such discussion had taken place, however.

Two well-known Russian pranksters who earlier denied making the call admitted responsibility on Thursday and put a recording of the conversation online.

“Now I understand why the so-called pranksters waited so long. They were doctoring the conversation and had to wait even longer for approval from their supervisors in the Kremlin and the FSB,” said Mr Poroshenko’s spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko, using the acronym for Russia’s security services.

He said they had removed “statements of the Russian occupation of parts of Ukrainian territory and accusations that Moscow does not want to pull out its troops from our country, as well as failure of [Russian president] Vladimir Putin to comply” with a fragile peace plan for areas held by Kremlin-backed separatists.

As to how the conversation was allowed to happen, Mr Tsegolko said: “The investigation showed some officials at Kyrgyzstan’s ministry of foreign affairs were involved.”

On Friday, Kyrgyzstan’s foreign ministry said the country’s security services had detained someone in connection with the hoax.

The duo that claim to have made the call, Alexei Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov, insist they have no connection to Russian politicians or security services, but their pranks are often aimed at subjects of Moscow’s official ire and are celebrated by state media. ...

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...mlin-behind-prank-call-to-president-1.2873665
 
Full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7333898.stm

If this was a hoax, it's a doozy. I don't see what the family could have got out of pretending their daughter was kidnapped. It's brought them nothing but sorrow and now the stepfather has been outed as a possessor of child porn.

Remember the tearful mother on the news a few weeks ago? Was she acting?

Mark Simpson: How Karen Matthews made a fool out of me
8 February 2017

Shannon Matthews's disappearance in a 2008 hoax-kidnapping is being recounted in a BBC drama. BBC News's Mark Simpson, who reported on the case, looks back at the deception.

Karen Matthews made a fool out of me.
I looked into her sunken eyes, saw that she was petrified and gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe my judgement was coloured by the fact that she chose to give me her first interview.
Maybe it was clouded by seeing inside her small semi-detached house, and the grim conditions in which she and her seven children were living.
Maybe I was so cold at the time, my brain froze.

Karen's daughter Shannon, nine, disappeared on the coldest night of the year in February 2008.
Police divers who searched a lake near her home in Dewsbury Moor in West Yorkshire had to break through ice to get into the water. The air temperature had dipped to -4C.

The night Karen agreed to talk to me, I was shaking with cold after spending hour after hour talking live on the BBC News Channel (or BBC News 24 as it was then).
Karen spotted me out of her front window and came out to talk. She was shaking too, but out of fear.
She was scared - scared of being found out.

She gave me no eye contact. She looked down the barrel of the BBC camera and said; "Shannon if you're out there, please come home. We love you to bits, we miss you so much. Please, I'm begging you baby, come home."

When the police saw her interview on the BBC Ten O'Clock News, they were annoyed.
They had advised her not to talk to the media. They were as surprised as me that she agreed to give me an interview.
So was this erratic behaviour the first sign that all was not what it seemed?
In hindsight, it may seem so, but at the time, it seemed simply a desperate act by a desperate mother.

Fresh in my mind were the Soham murders of schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. When children disappeared for more than 48 hours, the outcome was usually not good.
That is why there was such a huge community effort to try to find Shannon. People realised that time was short.
Yes, I did wonder if Karen Matthews was telling the truth. Everyone did.
However, I believed her. And I was not alone.

As well as searching hedges and parkland, the police drew up a map showing where convicted paedophiles lived in the Dewsbury area.
They checked, and double-checked. There was no sign of Shannon.

As days turned to weeks, the more convinced detectives became that Shannon would not be coming home.
However, Karen's friends and neighbours never gave up, and neither did the police.
About 10% of the force's officers were put on the case and more than £3m was spent in what was one of the largest search operations since the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.

Shannon was eventually found, 24 days after she disappeared. A BBC colleague got a tip-off and phoned me.
I was shopping in Ikea in Leeds at the time, and nearly dropped my phone on a multi-coloured Swedish rug when I heard the news.
As I drove down the A6110 to Dewsbury, I wondered if Karen would give me an interview again.
We could do it in the same spot where we had first spoken.
The only difference would be that this time she would be with Shannon beside her.
The tears would turn to cheers. For once, it would be a story with a happy ending.
What a fool I was.

It later emerged that Shannon had been kept drugged and hidden in the base of a divan bed by the very people appealing for her safe return.

That September Karen, and Michael Donovan, the uncle of Karen's partner, went on trial for kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice. They were jailed for eight years after the court heard about their plot to hide the child and claim a £50,000 reward that subsequently had been offered by the Sun.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38906967
 
Mark Simpson: How Karen Matthews made a fool out of me
8 February 2017

Shannon Matthews's disappearance in a 2008 hoax-kidnapping is being recounted in a BBC drama. BBC News's Mark Simpson, who reported on the case, looks back at the deception.

Karen Matthews made a fool out of me.
I looked into her sunken eyes, saw that she was petrified and gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe my judgement was coloured by the fact that she chose to give me her first interview.
Maybe it was clouded by seeing inside her small semi-detached house, and the grim conditions in which she and her seven children were living.
Maybe I was so cold at the time, my brain froze.

Karen's daughter Shannon, nine, disappeared on the coldest night of the year in February 2008.
Police divers who searched a lake near her home in Dewsbury Moor in West Yorkshire had to break through ice to get into the water. The air temperature had dipped to -4C.

The night Karen agreed to talk to me, I was shaking with cold after spending hour after hour talking live on the BBC News Channel (or BBC News 24 as it was then).
Karen spotted me out of her front window and came out to talk. She was shaking too, but out of fear.
She was scared - scared of being found out.

She gave me no eye contact. She looked down the barrel of the BBC camera and said; "Shannon if you're out there, please come home. We love you to bits, we miss you so much. Please, I'm begging you baby, come home."

When the police saw her interview on the BBC Ten O'Clock News, they were annoyed.
They had advised her not to talk to the media. They were as surprised as me that she agreed to give me an interview.
So was this erratic behaviour the first sign that all was not what it seemed?
In hindsight, it may seem so, but at the time, it seemed simply a desperate act by a desperate mother.

Fresh in my mind were the Soham murders of schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. When children disappeared for more than 48 hours, the outcome was usually not good.
That is why there was such a huge community effort to try to find Shannon. People realised that time was short.
Yes, I did wonder if Karen Matthews was telling the truth. Everyone did.
However, I believed her. And I was not alone.

As well as searching hedges and parkland, the police drew up a map showing where convicted paedophiles lived in the Dewsbury area.
They checked, and double-checked. There was no sign of Shannon.

As days turned to weeks, the more convinced detectives became that Shannon would not be coming home.
However, Karen's friends and neighbours never gave up, and neither did the police.
About 10% of the force's officers were put on the case and more than £3m was spent in what was one of the largest search operations since the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.

Shannon was eventually found, 24 days after she disappeared. A BBC colleague got a tip-off and phoned me.
I was shopping in Ikea in Leeds at the time, and nearly dropped my phone on a multi-coloured Swedish rug when I heard the news.
As I drove down the A6110 to Dewsbury, I wondered if Karen would give me an interview again.
We could do it in the same spot where we had first spoken.
The only difference would be that this time she would be with Shannon beside her.
The tears would turn to cheers. For once, it would be a story with a happy ending.
What a fool I was.

It later emerged that Shannon had been kept drugged and hidden in the base of a divan bed by the very people appealing for her safe return.

That September Karen, and Michael Donovan, the uncle of Karen's partner, went on trial for kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice. They were jailed for eight years after the court heard about their plot to hide the child and claim a £50,000 reward that subsequently had been offered by the Sun.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38906967
I remember watching it all unfolding on the news at the time and we watched the dramatisation of it last night on catch up TV .. gripping stuff ..

.... I've read somewhere that a Raoul Moat biopic is also in the making, I was gripped to that unfolding situation as well .. both seem a bit to soon though to be honest ..
 
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